


Seeker, Confessor, Orb

by Transcendant_Alpaca



Category: Legend of the Seeker
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-24
Updated: 2009-12-24
Packaged: 2017-10-05 03:32:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,163
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/37349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Transcendant_Alpaca/pseuds/Transcendant_Alpaca
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If Richard and Kahlan can't be together, maybe there is another way for them to express their feelings.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Seeker, Confessor, Orb

Richard paused at the entrance to the cave. Kahlan had told him to meet her here at midnight, so once Zedd was asleep, he'd slipped away, quiet as a rabbit through the woods, to the cave they'd passed shortly before stopping for the night. He looked around, but the dark forest revealed nothing, no danger at least. Hopefully they were far enough into the wilderness that the D'Haran patrols wouldn't stumble across them.

He stepped into the cave. "Kahlan?"

"Here, Richard," came a voice further back in the cave. It was dark inside, but the moon was full and cast enough light at the cave's entrance that he could see once his eyes adjusted. The cave was no more than twenty paces deep and the ceiling declined sharply. He had to bend down to keep his head from hitting the uneven ceiling. He found Kahlan near the back of the cave. In the dim light he could make out her shape on a low bench of rock that stuck out from the cave wall. Even in the faint moonlight, the white of her Confessor's gown seemed to shimmer.

She stood when he approached. Being smaller than he, she did not need to stoop to stay clear of the ceiling. Two quick steps, she was right in front of him, and with his neck bent, their faces were level. She kissed him.

In the furthest corners of his mind, warning voices cried out. Zedd's: "It can never be. Not with her." Kahlan's: "We can _never_ be together. My power would destroy you." But Kahlan's mouth on his, her tongue demanding and filled with need, drowned out the warnings. He wrapped his arms around her waist and drew her closer; she wove her fingers into his hair and pulled him further into her, kissing him with urgency. Already his body was responding to her kiss and her body pressed against his. She must have felt this, because she pressed against him harder, rocking slightly from side to side. He heard a low, moaning voice, and realized it was his.

She lifted her mouth from his and caught his earlobe between her teeth. She didn't bite, merely squeezed her teeth gently together as she exhaled. Her breath, hot on his ear and neck, nearly made his knees buckle.

"Kahlan," he whispered. She stepped back, drawing him with her. She turned, and gently pushed Richard back onto the stone bench. Once he was sitting, she climbed on top of him, knees straddling his hips, and lowered her mouth to his once more. Her kiss was gentler this time, but no less hungry as she explored his mouth with her lips and tongue. She trapped his lower lip between her teeth and gently squeezed as she had with his ear. As she did this, she rocked her hips forward, grinding against his erection and it felt so good that Richard thought he would lose his mind. He slid both hands down her back to her hips, thrusting his hips forward as he pulled hers tighter against him. She made a small, wordless noise of pleasure, so he did it again, running a line of slow, sucking kisses down her throat as he did.

Soon, much too soon, she pulled away from him. "We have to stop." Her voice was breathless and reluctant, and she rubbed against him one more time, but she pulled herself out of his lap. He could have held her there, but let her go after a moment.

Shaking her head, she said, "We can't... _I_ can't..." Her breathing was still fast and uneven, and Richard realized she was as close to losing control as he was.

He didn't trust his voice not to quaver, so he nodded. He knew they couldn't be together, not like that. But when she kissed him, it became hard to remember.

"I... I asked you out here for something else." The reluctant look faded, replaced by an eager light in her eyes. She stood, and disappeared into the darkness in the back of the cave, returning a moment later with her pack. When she opened it, a tiny light shone from within. She pulled out a sphere, glowing from within. Violet and green mist swirled beneath its surface.

"Isn't that-"

"The orb of Azalel, yes. I found it." A little smile played across her lips. "In Zedd's bag."

He opened his mouth to ask her why but she gestured for him to be quiet. Okay, he decided. Play this her way. He wanted her, wanted her so much it was an ache at times. And he knew he couldn't have her. His last encounter with the orb hadn't ended well but if there was one person in his life he would trust to use magic on him, it was Kahlan.

"I... I want to share a memory with you." She held the orb up to his head. "If you're willing."

He looked into her eyes and nodded. "Yes." If he could not share her bed, he would share with her what he could. Even, apparently, her memories.

The orb flared, lighting the cave and making his eyes hurt, so he let them slip closed. He felt her lips on his again, soft and loving, and that made the spinning disorientation that struck him a moment later bearable.

He was falling, tumbling and spinning out of control as bright shapes flashed past too quickly to see. A strange tuneless noise surrounded him, growing louder and louder, until it was nearly painful, then stopped, and suddenly he could see again.

But instead of a dark cave, Richard was looking out over a small clearing, sitting with his back against a tree. He was looking at a small book, but the hands holding the book were too small, too pale, too pretty. And the sleeve was white...

Sweet Spirits, he was in Kahlan's body. He was living one of Kahlan's memories. She was sharing it with him as she kissed him, back in the cave. But what memory was this?

Then Kahlan looked up from her book and Richard knew. She looked up, and Richard saw himself. She was giving him a memory of himself? Richard -- no, Memory-Richard, he corrected -- had his shirt off and the Sword of Truth in hand. Zedd was sitting in the shade nearby, making fruit hover and flit about around Memory-Richard, who was spinning from target to target, slicing pears and bluefruit in half with graceful strokes of the Sword. Richard had no control in the memory, could only look where Kahlan herself was looking, and her eyes seldom left him. She seemed particularly interested in the muscles of his shoulders, how they slid and bunched as he trained.

Richard remembered: Zedd had been pushing him hard all morning. He'd been exhausted and covered in sweat by the time they were through. He'd been so focused on his training that he hadn't noticed Kahlan watching. He could feel her heart beating faster as she stared, unnoticed by either Seeker or wizard. Richard felt his hand moving to his forehead, brushing away a faint sheen of sweat that had gathered on Kahlan's brow.

She was getting aroused, watching him work out, Richard realized. And deep in her memory, feeling the reactions of her body, so was he.

In fact, Kahlan had become _very_ aroused. A hand trailed down a chest, and Richard found he had lost all sense of where he ended and Kahlan began, because as the hand brushed his breast, he felt a flush of pleasure from his nipple, already stiff with excitement. His thumb brushed across it again, then slid down his stomach, pushing his divided skirt aside and running his hands down his thigh over the dark material of the leggings Kahlan wore beneath it.

The hand slid back up and a ragged breath escaped Kahlan's lips as she touched herself through the leggings, eyes still on Memory-Richard's body as he sliced his way through the wizard's breakfast. A melon disappeared in thin air, and the hand began moving faster as he swung at it. Nor did the hand stop when Memory-Richard stopped swinging. She was too far away to hear what Zedd told Richard, but he remembered well enough, even through the haze of pleasure that was filling his senses.

"To see what is not there, focus on what is." Typical wizard riddles.

Memory-Richard looked thoughtful for a moment, then swung the Sword of Truth in a tight double-arc, horizontal slash leading smoothly into vertical stroke, and four equal halves of now-visible melon fell to the ground. Heat flared up in Richard as the hand pressed harder, then he was on his feet, nearly running, barely able to breathe. Moments later, he found himself at the little river they were camped near, and Kahlan was stripping off her white gown, then the light leather armor she wore beneath, and plunging into the cool water.

The water was cool on Richard's skin, but did nothing to quell the heat inside. His hand was back between his legs, sliding against his unfamiliar, intimate flesh with rapid, gentle strokes that felt unlike anything he'd experienced in his own body.

A new sensation added itself to his already overloaded senses, a pleasure he couldn't identify, but he was beyond curiosity now, beyond thought. Pleasure washed over him in slow waves and there was nothing else.

Something was rising up in his body. The pleasure was reaching the point of no return. Suddenly, Kahlan's body shuddered. All of her muscles grew rigid. Then all of the tension unwound, sending ripples of ecstasy through him. Something slammed into his chest -- hard, like the shockwave that had hit him when he set fire to the D'haran dragon powder stockpile and hadn't gotten away fast enough, but without the fire or sound of explosion.

Kahlan's power, unleashed in the moment she lost control. The thought was chilling, but could not quite penetrate the warm haze that he was floating in.

Resting, Kahlan lay in the cool water near the shoreline, for how long, Richard wasn't sure. The gentle current washed the sweat and heat from Kahlan's body, but she rose from the water before it chilled. She was brushing the dust off of her hastily discarded clothes when there was a noise behind her. Not a footstep, but a hastily indrawn breath.

Richard already knew what was behind her. It was him. There was a silence. Too long a silence. "Kahlan," Memory-Richard finally managed. Richard remembered. Trying to form an apology, an explanation, _anything_, completely unable to say anything but her name. She was beautiful, he knew that. But stumbling upon her, still wet from the river, long dark hair dripping and clinging to her fair skin, more perfect than sunlight, he was struck doubly dumb, both mute and unable to think. Her touch could compel love, through magic. The sight of her, as it had the first time he saw her, could do the same to him, without any magic. So too late to be polite, he'd spoken her name, and too late to be chivalrous, he'd turned the other way. At the time, he'd thought she would be furious with him. Hate him, perhaps, if she'd thought he was trying to spy on her like this.

Now, living this moment in her memory, he felt his body -- her body -- suppressing laughter.

"I... I didn't see anything." Memory-Richard avowed as Kahlan put her underthings on, and the black leather leggings and armor. The gown was simply draped over one arm as Kahlan walked up to him.

"You can't lie to a Confessor."

Richard's eyes fell closed, when he opened them, he was back in the cave. The first thing he noticed was Kahlan, sitting beside him. She never took her eyes off his as she was setting the orb down beside her with one hand. The next thing he noticed was her other hand, which was still wrapped around him. The third was his trousers, which apparently, she had unfastened and pushed down around his thighs while he was in her memory. The phantom sensation, that's why it seemed familiar. It was his own body, reliving the memory with him. She had brought his body to its climax as she reached her own in the past.

It might be the closest they'll ever get to being together, he realized with a pang of sadness. That sadness faded quickly. Maybe they can't have everything, but she had found a way for them to share something more than they could before. Because maybe she wanted to be with him as badly as he longed to be with her.

He touched her cheek, drew her close and kissed her. "Thank you."

She stood, and handed him the orb. "Well, it's your turn next time. We should get back to camp if we don't want Zedd to wake up with both of us gone."


End file.
